Most box office analysts focus on the domestic (North American) record and figures, but the real game is being played globally nowadays, and the Marvel Studios brand has another international hit on its hands in Thor: The Dark World.

While it won’t reach the heights of Iron Man 3, in just its second week of domestic release and third week of international release, the film passed $500 million ($504.2) in worldwide receipts, including an estimated $352.2m in foreign territories, which already blows by the foreign cume of every Wave 1 Marvel film including Captain America ($194m), Iron Man ($267m), Iron Man 2 ($312m), and of course its own predecessor Thor ($268m).

Worldwide The Dark World has also already well-passed the $449m total of the 2011 original film with more to go despite the box office oxygen being sucked up by The Hunger Games sequel opening this week.

To put in in another perspective, The Dark World will eventually shatter the Man of Steel’s foreign total of $372m.

Who would have predicted just four years ago a Thor movie would out gross a Superman film around the world?

Sony Plans Big-Screen SPIDER-MAN Spin-Offs

Amazing Spider-Man: The Franchise? That's what Sony Pictures Co-Chairman Amy Pascal may have hinted to investors on Thursday. With the X-Men franchise reportedly expanding under Fox, DC and Warner Bros getting their acts together with the sequel to Man of Steel and other films under development, and of course Marvel Studios' vaunted shared universe known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it seems only a natural next step for Sony with Spider-Man.

The problem then, however, is who could possibly step into a spotlight movie for Sony based on the much smaller corner of the Marvel Universe that is Spider-Man? Pascal's direct quote was, according to The Wrap, "We are going to access Marvel’s full world of Spider-Man characters, so be on the lookout for new heroes and villains."

"We do very much have the ambition about creating a bigger universe around Spider-Man. There are a number of scripts in the works,” Sony Pictures Entertainment chief Michael Lynton added, according to Deadline, who reports he was referring to other "characters and villains in the series," with Lynton concluding that Sony was “working closely with Marvel and Disney.”

Well, as far as heroes are concerned, there's Spider-Man, and… a lot of characters based directly off of him. There is Araña, and others who have carried the name Spider-Girl, of course. Black Cat is always a factor, though it is slightly harder to think of a solo film for a cat burglar who sometimes acts as a superhero when it serves her (plenty of room for new interpretations at least). There are always the Spider-Clones, like Ben Reilly and Kaine, but those might be surprisingly hard to accomplish on screen. Rumors of a Venom solo spin-off date back to the last Spidey series, and we suppose Morbius, Silver Sable, or a handful of others could make the film transition. The fact remains, however, that most of Spider-Man's allies through the years were Avengers or X-Men characters shared over, something that Sony probably doesn't have the rights to do.

What exactly Pascal meant, and who/how/when they would be thinking of developing remains to be seen. There's always the Slingers?